Re: [RFC] fix sysfs symlinks

Horst von Brand
2004-04-16T18:04:03Z

viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk said:
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 03:02:32PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> > No, we don't want that. It's ok to have a dangling symlink in the fs if
> > the device the link was pointing to is now gone. All of the struct
> > class_device stuff relies on the fact that a struct device can go away
> > at any time, and nothing bad will happen (with the exception of a stale
> > symlink.)
> >
> > Yeah, it can cause a few odd looking trees when you unplug and replug a
> > device a bunch of times, all the while grabbing a reference to the class
> > device, but once everything is released by the user, it is cleaned up
> > properly, with no harm done to anything.
>
> Except that these "symlinks" are expected to follow the target upon
> renames. Which means that we either need a very messy scanning of
> the entire tree on every rename (obviously not feasible) or we need
> to store pointer to target and regenerate the path. Which, in turn,
> requires holding a reference.

Sounds an awful lot like ordinary hard links...
--
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